Woman returns to POW bracelet she wore 40 years ago

Mass. woman flies to St. Augustine to give her old bracelet to POW

031613 -- Vietnam Bracelet -- Giles Norrington and Peggy Cornacchio - -- Peggy Cornacchio, who lives in Salem, Mass., flew to Jacksonville Saturday to give Giles Norrington a POW-MIA bracelet she wore for him 40 years ago when he was a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton. Norrington, 77, is a retired Navy pilot who lives in Titusville today. He did not know Cornacchio was coming. photo by Michael Isam

031613 -- Vietnam Bracelet detail -- Peggy Cornacchio, who lives in Salem, Mass., flew to Jacksonville Saturday to give Giles Norrington a POW-MIA bracelet she wore for him 40 years ago when he was a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton. Norrington, 77, is a retired Navy pilot who lives in Titusville today. He did not know Cornacchio was coming. Giles Norrington and Peggy Cornacchio - photo by Michael Isam

This story ends in the exchange of a bracelet between two weeping adults who before Saturday night had never met.

It begins in 1971, when Peggy Cornacchio was 11, and her parents sent away for a metal bracelet bearing the name of a U.S. prisoner of war. Many similar bracelets were worn during the intense years of the Vietnam War.

The name on the bracelet Peggy got was “LCDR Giles Norrington,” a Navy pilot who had been shot down over North Vietnam on May 5, 1968.

Peggy didn’t know Norrington or anything about his life. That didn’t matter. On most school days for two years Peggy wore his name around her wrist. By wearing it she honored his service and sometimes, sitting in class at Nathaniel Bowditch School in Salem, Mass., the place where she grew up, she thought of Norrington and what happened to him.

Two years after she began wearing it, her parents read in the Boston Globe newspaper that Norrington had been released from captivity. Peggy felt relieved, but still wore the bracelet here and there for the other Americans left in Vietnam.

Then the war drew down, the bracelet was packed away, Peggy went to college, grew up and 40 years passed.

Last Christmas, rummaging through a box of forgotten keepsakes, Peggy came across the bracelet. Holding it for the first time in decades, she wondered.

What happened to Norrington? Where had he gone? Was he still alive?

She searched the Internet and found he was alive, living in Florida and scheduled to speak Saturday night in St. Augustine at the annual awards dinner for the Chase-Rescorla Scholarship. She felt like she needed to give him the bracelet.

“I thought he’s got to be getting up there,” she said. “If I don’t do this now, it’s not going to happen.”

She bought a $400 plane ticket and took some time off from work. Saturday morning, she and a friend flew to Jacksonville from Boston.

She didn’t tell Norrington she was coming.

5 years confined

An infamous place of torture and brutal confinement, the Hanoi Hilton was a prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam. Giles Norrington spent 1,775 days there.

He was from Ohio and joined the Marine Corps as an enlisted man out of high school in 1954. In 1965 he switched to the Navy. Three years later the plane he was piloting was shot down and he was captured.

He was tortured at first and then, he said, the hardships of isolation set in.

“The biggest enemy was boredom,” he said. “What I mean by that is, we had no intellectual stimulation.”

Norrington said the conversations he had with his fellow American POWs were “precious.” They would tell each other the stories of their lives.

“When you were listening to those, it was a time away from your problems,” he said.

The prisoners didn’t know what would happen to them. They certainly had no idea people back home were wearing bracelets bearing their names.

On March 14, 1973, he was released.

When he got home he learned about the POW-MIA bracelets, which tens of thousands of Americans had begun wearing to remember the captured servicemen. Talking about what they meant to him recently, he got emotional saying that they represented the military men “who gave all.”

He retired from the Navy in 1988, married and moved all across the country before he and his wife settled in Titusville, where they live today.

Over the years Norrington, 77, received more than 100 of the POW-MIA bracelets bearing his name.

Most arrived in the mail.

Not forgotten

When Cornacchio, 52, pulled the bracelet out of the bottom of that box on Christmas, it was broken. She took it to a jeweler in Salem who, after learning why she wanted it fixed, repaired it for free.

Cornacchio, the intact bracelet and her friend from Salem, Beth Ross, flew into the First Coast on Saturday morning. They stayed at the home of Athena Tickner, a childhood friend and Air Force veteran who lives in Jacksonville.

Getting ready to go to St. Augustine on Saturday night, Cornacchio chose to not wear mascara. She was sure she was going to cry. And she did.

“I can tell you that tears were streaming down my face and hers,” Norrington said when describing their embrace.

He said when the stranger from Massachusetts handed him the bracelet at the dinner, he felt, “Joy and relief and just the kind of pleasure that you can’t explain in words. I can’t get over it.”

Of all the bracelets he has received through the years, he called Cornacchio’s the most important. She gave it to him two days after the 40th anniversary of his release from the Hanoi Hilton.

Cornacchio and her friend are flying back to Salem today. Cornacchio will be back to work Wednesday, and when she goes, she will carry a sense of relief.

“For me, it was so important that he knew there was a person out there who didn’t forget about him,” she said of Norrington.

He is back home in Titusville. Through the years, as he and his wife moved across the country, he donated a lot of the bracelets he received to military museums and historical societies. The one Cornacchio gave him is sitting on his kitchen table as he decides where to keep it.

He has no plans to give it away.

“There are some things in life that you just don’t let go,” he said. “And that’s one of them.”

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I can't allow credit for the photo to be given to me. I did NOT take the photo. I have contacted Mr. Browning and he will be contacting the Record to get clarification on the person who took the photo.

To the person who took the photo, "Thank You". It was a madhouse evening full of magic and not everyone could be everywhere to catch those special moments that are gone in the twinkling of an eye. I'm so glad you were there.

Thank you for your service, sir. I am so very grateful you were there for all of us who need and appreciate your military protection and sacrifice. I am thankful to God that you came home safe, to your family. High School Class of 1974. May God bless you and your family.